Officer Is Fatally Shot in Simi Valley Gunfight : Crime: Ex-member of LAPD’s Devonshire Division dies after shootout with man threatening suicide, police say.

A former Valley-based Los Angeles police officer, who transferred to the Simi Valley department just months ago for better pay, was shot and killed Friday after answering a report of a distraught man threatening to kill himself.

Police said Officer Michael Clark was fatally wounded during a gunfight with a despondent Simi Valley man, who had fired 10 to 15 shots from his home with a semiautomatic weapon about 2 p.m. before barricading himself inside.

Police used an armored vehicle to rescue Clark before he died. A tense standoff ended after five hours when officers pelted the home with more than a dozen tear-gas canisters and stormed inside.

Suspect Daniel Allan Tuffree, 48, was treated for gunshot wounds and arrested on suspicion of murder.

Neighbors said Tuffree is a physical education teacher at a San Fernando Valley high school. Police, however, said they did not know his occupation.

Clark, 28, who served previously as a patrol officer at the LAPD’s Devonshire Division in the Valley, was remembered by colleagues there as a tough cop whose major concern after leaving Los Angeles was that there would be relatively little action on a smaller force.

“I wish I had a station full of guys like him,” said LAPD Sgt. Bill Thomas, who worked with Clark during his 2 1/2-year stint at the Devonshire Division. “He kind of reminded me of the guys who were on the job when I came on, and that was 27 years ago. No-nonsense, big, husky guy.”

Investigators were uncertain about what prompted the deadly attack by Tuffree.

Police said Tuffree called his insurance company about 2 p.m., telling agents that he was about to commit suicide. Company officials immediately notified Simi Valley police, who dispatched Clark and two other officers to the scene.

The officers approached the front door of the residence, but were unable to make contact with Tuffree, acting Simi Valley Police Chief Dick Wright said.

The three made their way to the back yard, where they spoke with Tuffree before he disappeared into the house and, moments later, came out firing.

Clark went down and his colleagues returned fire, but they were forced to retreat from the stream of bullets.

Friday’s fatal shooting and the dramatic standoff that followed drew a swarm of police officers, shocked neighbors and even a group of Simi Valley Explorer Scouts to the scene. The scouts, who work with the police, provided officers with refreshments while they waited to flush the suspect out of hiding.

“I had just come outside and was walking across the street when I heard the shots,” said Jack Packenham, who lives directly across the street. “I hit the ground immediately. I could see bullets flying through the fence.”

Within minutes, the first team of officers converged on the scene. But it took them 20 minutes before they could get to the wounded Clark, using an armored vehicle to crash through a back-yard fence and dragging him to a patrol car.

He was rushed to Simi Valley Hospital in a cruiser but died about 4 p.m.

The killing is the first fatal shooting of a police officer in Simi Valley, perennially ranked by the FBI as one of the safest cities in the nation. It shocked Clark’s friends and co-workers at the Simi Valley Police Department.

“It’s a terrible thing,” Sgt. Bob Gardner said. “This has never happened before in Simi.”

Clark’s former LAPD colleagues also mourned his passing.

Thomas said he and Clark occasionally had spoken about the hazards of the job, but that they never dwelt on it.

“He was very officer-safety-conscious . . . he made a lot of arrests,” Thomas said. “He was very hard-working, aggressive. If anybody needed backup or anything in the field, he was one of the first guys there.”

Thomas said Clark served in the Marine Corps and has a wife and 4-month-old child, who now live in the small Ventura County city of Moorpark.

Even as they were learning of Clark’s death Friday afternoon, officers at the scene of the shooting on Aztec Court were busy flushing out the suspected shooter. Cordoning off the neighborhood, they herded nearby residents away from the holed-up suspect. The special-weapons squad secured the area while police attempted to talk Tuffree out of the home.

More than two dozen officers surrounded the single-story tract home, while scores of neighbors and residents watched.

After four hours, officers launched a series of tear-gas canisters inside the house from two directions. An officer with a pistol provided cover for another officer firing tear gas from the back yard while SWAT team members fired more canisters from the front side of the house.

Shifting winds sent some of the gas through the neighborhood, prompting about 20 officers to move back. A number of neighbors and reporters were overcome by the gas, and medical crews provided water to flush eyes.

About 7 p.m., a team of special-weapons officers lobbed concussion grenades into the house and stormed in, finding Tuffree huddled and shot inside. He was taken to Los Robles Regional Medical Center in Thousand Oaks.

Tuffree “had multiple gunshot wounds, but none too serious,” said a paramedic who treated the suspect.

The man was naked and strapped to a stretcher, and the ambulance was followed by a police cruiser. Officers watched as emergency crews led Tuffree into the hospital.

Nearby residents said Tuffree has a history of making trouble in the neighborhood, throwing rocks at some homes and firing weapons into the air.

“The man has been kind of a mischief-maker,” said Margaret Davidson, who lives about six houses away.

The apparently unprovoked killing--the city’s fifth murder this year--shocked and saddened many Simi Valley officials, a handful of whom visited Simi Valley Hospital to check on the officer.

“The saddest part is that he just came to our department to get away from L.A.,” a tearful Councilwoman Sandi Webb said. Councilwoman Barbara Williamson also visited the hospital briefly, saying only that “we all feel badly.”

City Manager Mike Sedell said the city has ordered all flags to be flown at half-staff in honor of Clark.

“There’s a lot of emotion, disappointment and hurt,” he said.

Simi Valley has repeatedly been ranked as one of the safest large cities in the nation, with an extraordinarily low rate of violent crime. The city had no murders in 1993 and just one last year, a schoolyard stabbing by a 14-year-old.

Only six weeks ago, on Fathers Day, a Simi Valley man allegedly killed his two small children during a bitter divorce dispute. Larry Sasse, 31, who was accused by his wife of death threats spawned by drug abuse, then killed himself, authorities said.

In May, a 54-year-old Simi Valley man was fatally stabbed. A former Moorpark College honors student, Michael Baity, 23, was subsequently charged with murdering Fernando Fierro, who rented a room in the same house. The suspect’s attorney said Baity suffers from mental problems.

Simi Valley’s first homicide of the year was on April 1, when 19-year-old Armando Rodriguez was fatally shot by a rival gang member. Victor Ramirez was sentenced to 19 years in prison last week for the slaying. The shooting touched off several other violent gang confrontations in the city.

In 1994, 14-year-old Chad Hubbard was fatally stabbed by a classmate, Phillip Hernandez, in the parking lot of Valley View Junior High School.

At a press conference Friday evening at Simi Valley City Hall, Councilman Bill Davis mourned Clark’s death. “The shame of it all is, the good guy dies and the bad guy lives,” he said.

Contributing to this report were Times staff writers Miguel Bustillo, Daryl Kelley, Carlos V. Lozano, Nicholas Riccardi, Eric Wahlgren and Tracy Wilson and correspondents Paul Elias, Catherine Saillant and Ira Stoll.

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